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'Remarkable Milwaukee' setting the stage for Milwaukee's future

What's a city if not an expression of the people who live in it? When you put it that way, decisions about streets and sewers, buildings and bike paths get a lot more personal.

You'd never know it, though, given the impersonal ways we talk about urban design sometimes.

But what if a discussion about the future of Milwaukee was more like a cocktail party, with a well-concocted mix of personalities perched on couches and sipping spirits? What if it were like great theater, a performance on a gorgeous, old stage?

"Remarkable Milwaukee," an event planned for Monday at the Pabst Theater, promises to be all of those things, a humane, fun and substantive discussion about the city.

More than a dozen people - restaurateurs, artists, activists and civic leaders - have been invited to sit in a living room-like setting on stage and share big ideas about the future of our built environment. They’ll get to float fantasy projects, the building, restoration, rehabilitation and infrastructure projects they’d like to see if there were no restrictions or financial constraints.

What a great way to make an end run around the political structure and the gloom-and-doom talk about economic realities to entertain, if briefly, ambitious possibilities.

I talked to a range of community leaders, some who were invited to participate and others who were not, to get a sense of what ideas might be - or should be - up for discussion.

The idea that Milwaukee could transform itself from a postindustrial city into a worldwide hub for water-related research and industry is an exciting one, many said. With several of the world's largest water-tech companies operating here and expertise in freshwater sciences rooted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the idea is a natural.

Some hoped to see that sense of promise translated into concrete forms, particularly in projects related to the lakefront, inner harbor, rivers and water management systems.

THE LAKEFRONT

Restoring the connection between the city and the lakefront, Milwaukee's most defining characteristic, was front of mind for many. After years of piecemeal development along the lakefront that emphasized buildings rather than places, pedestrian and biking connections are pretty abrupt. There is a 24-foot drop between Wisconsin Ave. and Michigan St., for instance.

Could the seven acres occupied by the Downtown Transit Center, a bus shelter, and O'Donnell Park be re-imagined to include more gently sloping, public art-filled pathways down to the lake and a cultural campus, not unlike the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle? Could a more coherent city entrance be created there?

"Destination, destination, destination," said Dan Keegan, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, who makes the case for a cultural hub on the lake that would include MAM, Discovery World, Summerfest, and a possible new museum, perhaps a new facility for the Milwaukee Public Museum, for a "critical mass of experience."

"A more complete museum campus will make our great lakefront better and more in-line with other major cities," Keegan said.

"It is one of the greatest pieces of property in all of Wisconsin . . . and it's completely underutilized," said Eric Vogel, a local architect who teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, who with Keegan advocates for a greater mix of culture and entertainment on the lake.

A cultural campus might also attract more people to Lakeshore State Park, an urban park off the shores of Summerfest.

“It’s an amazing asset...an amazing place to teach children about water sciences and to walk out onto,” said Angela Damiani, vice president of ArtMilwaukee, a group known for large art events that take a highly inclusive approach, adding that she’s surprised how few people take advantage of the park.

THE INNER HARBOR

Just south of that downtown spot is Milwaukee's inner harbor, lined with piles of coal, scrap yards, long-forsaken buildings, acres of contaminated earth and a working port that some believe could be an ecological showplace.

Could the waterways that first brought industry to Milwaukee be cleaned up and give birth to forward-thinking forms of industry, sustainable water technologies and green architecture?

About a year ago, city officials and a group of architects and engineers at UWM - guided by internationally known artist, landscape architect and urban planner Herbert Dreiseitl - set out to study the possibilities. What's emerged so far is a provocative combination of the wild and the urban, of restoring a wetland habitat in ruins and creating the possibility for dense, urban development.

"We should be the poster child for architecture and water," said Grace La, principal of La Dallman architects and associate professor at UWM's School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

La, who worked with students on a classroom redesign of a petite county park and boat launch in the inner harbor last semester, said some of the most interesting discoveries to date are about addressing the edge, where water and land meet. The reintroduction of native plants and a softer, more-designed edge could help filter runoff and improve water quality in the harbor, she and others said.

Could these research projects lead to actionable plans the city can advance? Could Dreiseitl, known internationally for creating artful public spaces that make storm water management more visible, be invited to do a major project in Milwaukee?

WATER AWARENESS

For that matter, could water management become a more conscious part of urban life in Milwaukee generally?

"We really don't have a strategy for this. . . . We're ignoring stuff beneath the ground," said Cheryl Nenn, an ecologist with Milwaukee Riverkeeper and an advocate of native plantings along the rivers. "Some of the big ideas should be about making urban areas act more like natural ones."

Architect Jim Shields, of HGA architects and an associate professor at UWM's School of Architecture and Urban Planning, would like to see Milwaukee gradually replace expensive-to-maintain landscaping with plants that survived here for hundreds of years without human intervention. Not only do these plants filter runoff, they support aspects of the ecosystem that may be beyond our understanding in terms of importance, he said.

"Our landscape has always been stuff from Kentucky that we are fertilizing and foisting on the community," he said.

Native plantings also create beauty and unexpected, green getaways in the midst of the city. The rivers and the ribbons of green they create through downtown, which can be experienced at an intimate range (unlike in Chicago, for instance, where the city is high above the river), are an asset worth considering right now, said former Mayor John Norquist.

"It's some of the most valuable property in Milwaukee. . . . It's a good time to be thinking of those things," said Norquist, who will participate in the Monday discussion.

"The one thing that needs attention is the KK," he added, referring to the Kinnickinnic River. "If you had a KK bike trail that went from West Allis to the harbor, that would really help residential and commercial real estate."

URBAN AGRICULTURE

“It is my opinion that all green space should either be natirve plants or food for us,” said Ken Leinbach, executive director of the Urban Ecology Center, sharing one of his ideas for Milwaukee. Native plants support insect life that supports the rest of the food chain here, he said.

Michael Carriere, an assistant professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, would like to see Milwaukee become a hub for urban agriculture and related community-based development. It's really an intellectual reworking of how old buildings, remnants from the industrial age, can be repurposed in productive ways, he said.

"No one knows how to do this yet," said Carriere, who is studying the trend in 30 cities. "I would really like to begin a conversation between Sweet Water, Growing Power, those writing policy in the city, the Water Council and (the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District)."

James Godsil, co-founder of Sweet Water Organics (pictured above), an aquaponic farm that provides fish and produce, said he'd like to see "organic pathways" through the city. "It's all hybrid - for profit and nonprofit, old buildings with new ones, old craft and new science."

One of the keys to this kind of development, Carriere said, is having the right balance of planned and organic development.

The area near the intersection of N. 35th St. and W. Lisbon Ave. presents the kind of opportunity he's talking about, where Amaranth Bakery & Cafe started a community garden there that has become a meeting place for the local Hmong and African American communities and where visual and performing artists have moved into the area. Express Yourself Milwaukee, a group that brings the arts to underserved urban youth, also moved into an old bank building nearby.

It's a great spot with community cohesion. Still, there are a lot of foreclosed and abandoned homes and commercial properties, spaces in a state of legal limbo, that keep the area from full flower. Could the city find ways to support this kind organic, community initiative by addressing the zoning-related impediments?

“You can have all of the gardens in the world but you won’t have healthy communities if you don’t come up with ideas on how to address the foreclosure crisis,” he said.

CONNECTIVITY, SEGREGATION

Can art and performance projects staged in the urban landscape reduce the ways people become isolated in Milwaukee? Working independently of one another, artists Anne Basting and Sara Daleiden believe so.

Basting, an artist, theater scholar and executive director of UWM's Center on Age and Community, is working on a project called "Shipwrecked," which looks at various forms of isolation in the environment, whether cultural, generational or urban-suburban, as a public health issue. At its culmination next year, the project may feature a series of performances in the urban landscape.

Daleiden, who lives in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, was part of the Urban Rangers project last year in which artists gave tours of inaccessible L.A. locales. Here in Milwaukee, she's looking at where racial segregation exists. Her hope is to develop performance-based tours on trails that pass through racially segregated neighborhoods, tours that might give people a different perspective and that exist outside of the city grid where divides tend to be more palpable, she said.

One of the take-aways from the Occupy movements, Daleiden said, is that being present in the city and engaging people on sidewalks and public places can be an act of democracy unto itself.

“There have been a lot of claims lately that segregation has been written into zoning, and I think that’s true if various suburbs and also in Milwaukee,” said Shields, who suggests the city take less of a blanket approach to zoning.

For instance, Shields pointed out that new apartment buildings on the East Side are required to have a certain number of parking spaces because of the way they are zoned. This can make building less efficient and rents higher, he said. Slackening these requirements near public transportation hubs, like the intersection of North and Prospect avenues, would reduce rents, attract lower-income people and families and encourage the use of public transportation.
TRANSIT

It should come as no surprise that transit was on the minds of many, too. Milwaukee was identified 20 years ago as one of the most suitable cities for street cars or light rail because of its scale and density, Norquist said. Sooner or later, these things will happen Milwaukee, he said, if the city is going “to remain a big city,” in any case.

“It is now beyond absurd that we have no guided rail system, and that we are still fighting to defend the concept,” said Basting, echoing the sentiments of others. “If we can only have one big idea, I pick that one.”

WISCONSIN AVENUE

Revitalizing Wisconsin Avenue, once Milwaukee's grand artery, is a project many consider a top priority. But people were at a loss about how to deal with forlorn aspects of the street, too.

"Wisconsin Avenue - how do you spruce that up?" asked restaurateur Joe Bartolotta. "It's a very sensitive topic in this city. It's very frustrating. . . . It's hard to move forward."

What's needed for Wisconsin Ave. and the rest of downtown, for that matter is a magnet that will increase density, Bartolotta argued.

“I am a big proponent of the expansion of the convention center,” Bartolotta said. “If we don’t do something in the next 10 years, we will not be an impactful city on a national level. We continue to slip in the rankings.”

Many, of course, pointed to solving the problem of the faltering Shops of Grand Avenue, three city blocks of heartbreak. You could pour all kinds of money into Wisconsin Avenue, said Jill Morin, former CEO of Kahler Slater architects and the Creative Alliance, but it will be a "beautiful smile with a missing tooth" if the mall isn't dealt with.

Morin said she'd like to see an urban arts complex in Milwaukee, perhaps but not necessarily at the downtown mall, that would be a physical indicator of Milwaukee's "robust creative industry." It could include nonprofit groups, for profit businesses, retail, housing and entertainment, she said.

The Plankinton Building at the mall is already populated by a nexus of creative businesses, including ArtMilwaukee, MiKE and Third Coast Digest.

"There is a hub and a buzz over there that I have never seen in this city," said developer Gary Grunau of the nexus of creative business in the mall. "That sector is taking off and is what downtown is going to be about. . . . If anything, we need to grow that and make it permanent."

Grace La pointed to another potential downtown, arts-related hub, the Harmony Initiative, a collaboration among the Milwaukee Ballet, UWM's Peck School of the Arts and the Medical College of Wisconsin, which hopes to develop a building near the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.

The building could be an exciting, expressive counterpoint to the more understated Marcus Center and bring more arts venues together downtown, La said.

PRESERVATION

Milwaukee's historic architecture is one of the city's great assets, of course. But it appears there are many unresolved conflicts around how to manage it.

Times of economic strain, when there is pressure for jobs, construction and otherwise, can lead to great losses. The development community is putting pressure on the city to do away with the preservation commission or to dramatically reduce its ability to prevent demolitions or withhold permits.

“In these economic times, everyone is looking for what we need to do to jump start our economy,” said Peter Park, Milwaukee's former city planner under Norquist. "There is a cumulative effect of making hsasty decisions…great buildings and great streets were lost under the guise of progress.”

Grace La suggested that we develop methodologies that are about new patterns of life, as well as architectural heritage.

"In the postindustrial landscape, which we are in, the question is about how we reuse and subtract from the landscape smartly," said La, who is currently working on a project to utilize a remnant of a timber trestle along the Milwaukee river as a platform for, perhaps, pedestrians and performance.

“I am concerned that we will throw the baby out with the bath water,” Shields said. Brewers Hill is a great example of a neighborhood that was ready to be cleared away 30 years ago and was salvaged, he said. “As far as I can tell, preservation was the important device that made that happen,” he said.

Preservation group Historic Milwaukee could be the entity to bring all of these sides together, Shields said. There’s a fragility to the discussion, he added.

On a related subject, Milwaukee needs a system for finding, storing and using reclaimed materials, said the Urban Ecology Center's Leinbach.

“There is no waste in nature," he said. "Everything is used. If I could suggest one big idea for our city it would be to emulate that one aspect of ecology. That would be huge."

PUBLIC ART

Given the scuttling of Dennis Oppenheim's "Blue Shirt" years ago, the near-scuttling of Janet Zweig's "Pedestrian Drama" on Wisconsin Ave., and Milwaukee County executive Chris Abele putting the kibosh on a $700,000 commission for the county courthouse, some wonder whether Milwaukee will ever have a robust public art program. Still, it surfaced on a number of wish lists.

"There is no question that the creative vibe provided by public art adds tremendous value to the brand of a community," said Keegan, who would like to see private-public partnerships to place world-class sculpture on the lakefront, in the Third Ward and downtown.

"You know how public art works," said artist Reginald Baylor, who for years has been on the Milwaukee County public art committee, adding that temporary public art, like projects organized by In:Site, is an important ingredient. "It tags a city as being art friendly. It's a billboard advertisement to the world that we love art."

STRUCTURES

Perhaps interesting to note was how few of the ideas that people were interested in involved specific buildings projects. In addition to the Harmony Initiative, Keegan's call for a new museum on the lake and Grunau's recommendation to expand the convention center, bar and restaurant owner Mike Eitel suggested a soccer-specific stadium be built downtown, and historian John Gurda hoped for a creative solution for restoring the hisotirc properties at Milwaukee's National Soldier's Home.

In addition to a new museum on the lake, Keegan telegraphed the need for MAM to expand at some point to accommodate its growing collections and audiences. He also called for a full restoration of the War Memorial building that would honor the "iconic work of Eero Saarinen as well as the sacrifice of those who served and lost their lives for freedom."

"What more important message can we send to future generations than to restore the most important state memorial honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice?" Keegan said in a statement.

DESIGN DIALOGUE

Park, who is in the middle of a fellowship year at Harvard University, said the only big idea is that there is no single idea.

A worthy goal, though, should be to "create market demand for better design" generally, said Park, who is studying, among other things, ways to replace urban freeways in city centers.

Framing the discussion around what we want, aspire to and expect is better than talking about we don’t want, as a rule, Park said.

"There is a difference between politics that is transactional and politics that is transformational," Park said, echoing what he learned in a recent seminar with political analyst David Gergen. And the difference usually comes down to vision and leadership, Park said.

That kind of vision could come from a lot of places. The Historic Milwaukee event on Monday is also a celebration of Michael Cudahy and the many ways that he's invested in the community's built environment over the years, for instance.

The Marcus Prize at UWM is one of the most sought after architectural prizes in the world, with a $100,000 award. But a lot of the dialogue and excitement around the winners has remained rooted in the school. Is there a way to get the Marcus winners, including 2011 recipient Diebedo Francis Kere (above), more visibly engaged with the wider community and other institutions?

Vogel suggested that an architectural society be formed at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a group that could gather developers, architects and community leaders around discussions and exhibitions related to design. Similar groups in other cities have been known to exert real influence, serving, for instance, as springboards for important civic design competitions.

“If the city is serious about developing high quality plans, we’re going to need more champions," Vogel said.

Some of the "Remarkable Milwaukee" participants include Norquist, Morin, Grunau, Bartolotta, Baylor, La and Daleiden. The audience will be invited to submit questions as well. Tickets to the event, organized by preservation group Historic Milwaukee and the brainchild of its inventive executive director Anna-Marie Opgenorth, include a cocktail and networking hour beginning at 4:30 p.m. have been reduced this weekend to $10. Tickets can be purchased at pabsttheater.org or by calling (414) 286- 3663.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists.

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